l spars, oars, odds and ends of deck-lumber, were groping
and quivering in emptiness, till they fell heavily, one after the other,
down into the sea, like their own arms, lopped off and inert.

They pulled all the useless defences on board. The _Reine-Berthe_,
melting away into the thick fog, had disappeared as suddenly as a
painted ship in a dissolving view. They tried to hail her, but the only
response was a sort of mocking clamour--as of many voices--ending in a
moan, that made them all stare at each other in surprise.

This _Reine-Berthe_ did not come back with the other Icelandic fishers;
and as the men of the _Samuel-Azenide_ afterward picked up in some fjord
an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all
ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were
inscribed upon black slabs in the church.

From the very time of that apparition--the date of which was well
remembered by the men of the _Marie_--until the time of their return,
there had been no really dangerous weather on the Icelandic seas, but a
great storm from the west had, three weeks before, swept several sailors
overboard, and swallowed up two vessels. The men remembered Larvoer's
peculiar smile, and putting things together many strange conjectures
were made. In the dead of night, Yann, more than once, dreamed that he
again saw the sailor who blinked like an ape, and some of the men of
the _Marie_ wondered if, on that remembered morning, they had not been
talking with ghosts.

CHAPTER XII--THE STRANGE COUPLE

Summer advanced, and, at the end of August, with the first autumnal
mists, the Icelanders came home.

For the last three months the two lone women had lived together at
Ploubazlanec in the Moan's cottage. Gaud filled a daughter's place in
the poor birthplace of so many dead sailors. She had sent hither all
that remained from the sale of her father's house; her grand bed in the
town fashion, and her fine, different coloured dresses. She had made
herself a plainer black dress, and like old Yvonne, wore a mourning cap,
of thick white muslin, adorned merely with simple plaits. Every day
she went out sewing at the houses of the rich people in the town, and
returned every evening without being detained on her way home by any
sweetheart. She had remained as proud as ever, and was still respected
as a fine lady; and as the lads bade her good-night, they always raised
a hand to their caps.

Through th